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Previous studies on labor relations in the South Korean shipbuilding industry have emphasized that employers and managers fostered cooperation with manual workers, achieving industrial peace. What these scholars have often neglected to note is the extraordinary growth of lower-paid non-regular workers and the wage inequality between regular and non-regular workers. Given that the large-scale shipyards have historically been an epicenter of labor unrest and a stronghold of democratic labor unions in South Korea, both the enduring dualism and the relative lack of solidarity between regular and non-regular workers are especially puzzling. Through an in-depth case study of the Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), one of the world's largest ship manufacturers as well as a birthplace of militant labor unionism in South Korea, this article develops a relational account of dualism and inequality in the workplace. The author maintains that employers at HHI, in an attempt to reduce labor costs and improve export competitiveness, installed and perpetuated the dualism and inequality beginning in the early 1990s. The author also highlights the changing pattern of interaction between regular and non-regular workers from solidarity to fragmentation which contributed to increasing the workforce dualism and wage inequality at HHI. By investigating the dynamic interactions between regular/formal and non-regular/informal workers as well as the changing laborcapital relations, this article can enhance our understanding of how relational processes of exploitation, opportunity hoarding, and claim-making played key roles in strengthening or weakening the dualism and inequality in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of its arguable limitations, Goldthorpe's class scheme seems to allow a more fine-grained way of measuring social class. However, only a few sociologists have undertaken an investigation of empirical validation of this class schema. This study attempts to assess the validity of the Goldthorpe class scheme in South Korean context, following Evans (1992) and Evans and Mills (1998)'s studies. After pre-examining a multi-cross table by class indicators, this study analyzes latent class models, and examines to what extent the latent class structure matches the types of occupational classes identified on theoretical grounds by Goldthorpe. The author finds that Goldthorpe class scheme is roughly applicable to class structure in South Korea in that there is a clear distinction between employment relations: service relationship versus labor contract. Definitely, a four-class latent model that this study used clearly shows the existence of manual workers regulated by labor contract in a similar way with Goldthorpe class schema. However, this does not mean that Goldthorpe class schema is clearly valid. There are a lot of inconsistencies that should be investigated in further study. In order more clearly to understand class structure in Korea and to assess Goldthorpe class schema, there needs the more accumulation of studies investigating this issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]